San Francisco welcomes home heroine ship and its sailors

Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.

Dec. 11: Barry Bonds officially was welcomed to Candlestick Park yesterday and the newest Giant immediately began paying dividends on the team’s $43.75 million, six-year commitment to him. If goodwill can translate into victories, Bonds has guaranteed the Giants a pennant. When he wasn’t lighting up the room with his smile, he was saying politically correct things about his new team -and even his new ballpark. He also wasted little time defusing what could have become a minor controversy. Willie Mays’ No. 24 will stay retired by the Giants. Bonds, who wore No. 24 while with the Pittsburgh Pirates, will wear number 25 next year. That is the number worn by his father Bobby, a former Giants star who attended yesterday’s gathering and gave his wholehearted approval. It has been rumored that Bobby Bonds will be coming on board as the team’s hitting coach.

“Everyone knows my godfather is Willie Mays, and he has been like a second father to me,” said Barry “It is a great honor ... when you have someone who loves you very much (who) wants to do something special for you. And I think that’s what Willie wanted to do.” Although it has been suggested that Mays, who was not present yesterday, was not all that enthusiastic about giving up “24” in the first place, that was hardly noted in yesterday’s festive mood. Everybody was willing to take Barry’s word for it that all is well.

— David Bush

Dec. 15: Gale-force winds with gusts up to 68 miles an hour have failed to budge the Golden Gate Bridge, “It been blowing from the north, and all that does is clean the bridge,” a maintenance man said yesterday. Instruments showed the bridge had been swaying “hardly at all,” during the blow, he said. The bridge is designed to cope with 100 miles an hour winds striking it broadside from the west or east. “She’s built to sway 13 feet 6 inches of center in either direction,” the maintenance man said, “but she’s never come up to that.”

Dec. 12: The cruiser San Francisco is home. She came in out of the night, the heroine ship of the battle of the Solomons, bruised and battle-scarred, her steel torn and twisted, her decks riddled with shell holes. But she came back to her homeport — under her own power — proud, grim, undaunted. She came into the bay yesterday with the spirits of Admiral Callaghan and Captain Cassin Young on her bridge, both men killed in battle, with American sailors who met the best of the Japanese and crushed them. She came back with the immortal words of Admiral Callaghan: “We’ll get the big ones first!”

Never has the city given such a welcome with its skyline, its buildings, its hills black with thousands of watchers. And never was there such a greeting. There were cheers from the throngs on shore and from sailors on naval craft and merchantmen waiting their turn against the enemy. And there were strange silences — abrupt, still, overwhelming. Those on shore halted their cheers when they looked at the gray, torn cruiser and remembered the men who had fallen on their decks. When we went aboard her yesterday, as the cruiser passed under the Golden Gate Bridge, there were men still in their teens who were old, old youngsters. They had seen their friends riddled and killed. They had gone through hell. For there were many men killed on the San Francisco. The cruiser took salvo after salvo of shells from (Japanese) battleships. One hit the flag bridge, killing Admiral Callaghan and the men near him. Another hit the navigation bridge above, dropping Captain Young and Commander Arison and killing nearly everyone on the starboard side. They gave their lives in 37 terrible minutes in the South Pacific as their price for the greatest victory in America’s naval history.

Dec. 14: Virtually all of the 1100 grocers in San Francisco have agreed to make no more than one morning and one afternoon delivery after January 1, Samuel H. Westfall of the State Council of Defense announced yesterday. “Nearly all the merchants in other lines have cut down already to one a day,” Westfall said, “and it has been estimated that 750 men in San Francisco alone will be released for other work through these economies.” “Wholesalers have agreed to reduce the number of truck deliveries to retailers; forty milk distributors now cover the ground of 140 ten years ago, and San Francisco is the only city in the United States in which there are no milk deliveries at night; business of all sorts is cooperating in the effort to economize on man power.” “There is not a town in California today, except those of less than 4000 population, that has not adopted the one-delivery-a-day plan. The housewives of the State have been educated to serve the country by not demanding the delivery of little things.”